NEW YORK, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Ontario will shut about 2,000
megawatts of coal-fired power generation on Friday to reduce
carbon dioxide and other emissions to combat global warming and
improve health.

These plant closures mark nearly a decade of effort to
close the province's coal plants and move toward a cleaner
energy future.

"A coal-free Ontario will reduce air pollution and these
closures Friday bring us that much closer to replacing
coal-fired generation by 2014. Ontario will be one of the first
jurisdictions in the world to move from a past of dirty coal
generation to a future of clean energy," Ontario Minister of
Energy Brad Duguid told Reuters in an email.

Together the units, each capable of producing about 500 MW,
could produce enough power for about 2 million Ontario homes.

Ontario plans to shut all 6,400 MW of coal-fired generation
in the province by 2014.

Coal-fired generation is the single largest source of air
pollution in Ontario and eliminating it from the supply mix
will be the largest climate change initiative in Canada, the
government said.

To replace the coal-fired generators, energy companies,
including OPG, have spent billions to build new natural
gas-fired plants and wind farms, expand hydro facilities and
return to service nuclear reactors shut years ago.

Since 2003, when Dalton McGuinty became Ontario's premier,
the Energy Ministry said more than 8,000 MW of new cleaner
energy has entered service, including 1,400 MW of renewables,
and more than 5,000 km (3,106 miles) of new and upgraded
transmission and distribution power lines.

And, as more plants enter service over the next few years,
the remaining coal plants can retire or be converted to burn
biomass. Earlier this month, OPG said it would convert the
215-MW Atikokan coal plant to biomass. [ID:nBw085704a]

There are four coal-fired power plants in Ontario all owned
by OPG - Nanticoke and Lambton in the southern part of the
province and Thunder Bay and Atikokan in the north.

IT TAKES TIME TO SHUT COAL

Ontario started down this path in the early 2000s.

In 2003, new Ontario Premier McGuinty reaffirmed an
election promise to stop burning coal to generate electricity
in the province by 2007 to reduce emissions of sulfur and
nitrogen for health reasons and carbon dioxide to combat global
warming.

In 2005, however, the province said the 2007 target was
unrealistic and the Nanticoke plant would have to remain in
service until 2009 because it was needed to maintain power grid
reliability.

In 2006, Ontario pushed back the schedule to close the
plants until 2014 after determining some of the units would
still be needed for reliability.

But, the province decided it could shut some units -
Lambton 1 and 2 and Nanticoke 3 and 4 - four years ahead of
schedule on Oct. 1, 2010 since enough other plants were now
available to keep the grid stable.
(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)